A man will be charged with murder for killing his girlfriend's mother, a Florida woman who was reported missing last week and was found dead. Her daughter's boyfriend is the main suspect of the murder, police said Sunday.
Roy Nichols Jr., 26-year-old, confessed to the murder of Tricia Freeman, during an argument at Freeman's home in Palmetto on Tuesday. He recounted how the 47-year-old woman said something that apparently "set him off," Palmetto Police Chief Scott Tyler told reporters.
Tyler believes that Freeman's 21-year-old daughter, Kayla Colyer was likely not present at the time of the argument. "Kayla was not there but she participated in the murder in other ways," he stated, according to the Herald-Tribune.
Authorities believe that Nichols Jr. and Colyer drove together to dispose Freeman's dead body after the murder before going to Kentucky. The couple put Freeman's body in her car and left it in an undisclosed rural area in Florida, police said, according to the Bradenton Herald.
Nichols Jr. and his girlfriend Colyer, drove north after Freeman died in her car. The vehicle was later found abandoned, on Friday at a park in Ashland, Ky.
Tyler did not release details on how Freeman died. But Tyler did reveal that the couple told authorities where they had dumped Freeman's body following the murder, but did not elaborate except to say it was somewhere in Florida.
The couple was apprehended early Saturday in a West Virginia truck stop in Cabell County. A clerk working at the store recognized them from a news broadcast and alerted authorities.
Nichols Jr. will be facing charges of second-degree in Freeman's death. Meanwhile, Colyer will be charged with accessory to murder after the fact, according to the authorities. The investigators still want to explore what she was doing at the time of the murder.
